


Timing When You Can't See the Clock

by TimTheToaster (tabletoptime)



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, JayTim Week, M/M, Sort Of, for the Role Reversal prompt, like Tim spends a lot of time just angsting about things, the 'role' being 'trapped in a warehouse with explosives'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:46:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24527089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tabletoptime/pseuds/TimTheToaster
Summary: Tim had really thought that at some point he’d stop being blindsided by regrets every time he thought he was going to die.It wasn’t really that he thought he was going to stop nearly dying any time soon or anything, just that with the number of times he had thought about all the things he wished he had done when he had the chance, and then surviving by the skin of his teeth, that he would have actually done something about all those should-have’s.
Relationships: Tim Drake/Jason Todd
Comments: 7
Kudos: 157





	Timing When You Can't See the Clock

Tim had really thought that at some point he’d stop being blindsided by regrets every time he thought he was going to die.

It wasn’t really that he thought he was going to stop nearly dying any time soon or anything, just that with the number of times he had thought about all the things he wished he had done when he had the chance, and then surviving by the skin of his teeth, that he would have actually  _ done _ something about all those should-have’s.

Except he really had no idea how to get out of this one, not with his head swimming and nearly every bone in both arms broken. Not with his legs bound to separate support pipes, and a noose around his neck that with every movement slipped tighter. Not with his comms down and his trackers sending out one of his own false patrol paths.

Not with a couple hundred pounds of plastic explosives set to go off twenty feet away.

He couldn’t move, and he couldn’t free himself, and he couldn’t afford to wait for help.

All he could do was struggle to stand here, and regret.

Tim didn’t regret the choices that had gotten him here, beyond the specific mistakes of this night (he shouldn’t have turned down Jason’s invitation to patrol together, he should have done more research before pursuing this  _ oh so promising _ lead, he should have waited for the Rogues to cool down a bit more before coming after one of the A-listers, he should have-). Vigilantism was the right choice for him, the right cause to dedicate his life to, and he had known for a long time that it was going to end in tragedy. There wasn’t a clean way out for Gotham’s crimefighters. 

What he did regret, through the splintered and rabid pain, was not trying harder with his family. His friends. His… Jason.

Things had been tense in nearly every relationship he had for a while now, and he had been content to let things heal mostly on their own, too caught up in wrestling down his own pain to make the first step. For some godforsaken reason, he had thought he had time to make things right.

Classic Tim hubris.

The only person besides his friends he really talked to these days, outside of masks or media personas, was Jason.

It hadn’t been a deliberate thing, not at first anyways, more just sort of the result of a series of accidentally too-close patrols, of emergency safe house stops, and of both of them respecting the boundaries that really mattered. Before he knew it, Tim had been spending the night on Jason’s couches every Friday, and Jason on his at least twice during the week. 

He had never thought he’d get to see a sleepy morning-Jason wrestle with his espresso machine or an ancient waffle maker, but those images of half-conscious domesticity were all tucked very carefully into his heart.

But they hadn’t gotten closer than that careful trust and creeping vulnerability, than the little light in Tim’s chest that  _ burned _ when Jason was around. There were a dozen reasons it had been a bad idea, not least of which their history, and Tim had been content to work through them one by one rather than taking any kind of leap of faith. Patience, he had believed, was a virtue in interpersonal relationships.

And now he would die with that maybe barely even suggested.

His legs ached, and his feet slipped a little wider across the warehouse floor. The noose slipped a little tighter.

Tim wasn’t sure how he even would have gone about trying to approach Jason about feelings. Start off with some jokey flirting, and hope it escalated? Except that had always been Jason’s territory, sly looks and suggestive comments about ditching capes and cowls to make the most of all his assets, and maybe that would just be taken as playing into their camaraderie, which was  _ also _ something Tim wanted to do.

Any time he had gotten flustered he’d default back to business, dialing down the humour and the closeness to focus on violence all over again. Tim had  _ seen _ that response hurt Jason more than once, leaving him quieter for the rest of the night if he didn’t outright leave, and he’d kept doing it for his own comfort.

God, he was such an asshole. 

And he was never going to get the chance to say he was sorry. Or say how much he appreciated Jason’s careful first aid, or his cooking, or his stupid opinions on Tim’s furniture.

On the other hand, it was probably for the best that Tim never tried to say any of that because he probably would have said it wrong and somehow pissed Jason off, and then their sort-of friendship would have been ruined.

There wasn’t a visible timer on the explosives, and with his cowl damaged Tim really had no way to know how long he’d been here, or how long he had left. One of the goons had made it sound like things would kick off shortly after they got clear of the blast radius, but they had also mocked Tim, telling him sending his caped friends after them wouldn’t stop anything. So it was probably a timer situation, after all.

Tim couldn’t stop the part of his brain that started calculating how big an explosion this would create, and how long it would take to get a safe distance away. Doing math even in the face of death, if only his pre-calc teacher could see him now.

It was probably for the best Tim had never gotten closer to Jason, considering he was about to die. Jason certainly didn’t need another significant trauma added to his already long list of suffering. Losing a friend was better than losing something more (except that wasn’t true, and Tim knew that first hand. He was just selfishly trying to make himself feel better again).

For a moment, Tim thought the warehouse was shaking, but no. That was just his knees threatening to give out from underneath him. All that math would be meaningless if he couldn’t keep himself upright long enough to explode like a good Robin.

Tim’s vision was starting to blink in and out, dark spots teasing rest and a death sentence. He let his head hang down, noose pulling tighter yet and making him wheeze, in the wild hope that anchoring his gaze to the floor would give him  _ something _ he could pretend was support.

Somewhere, the shattering of glass cut into the ringing that was trying to drown out Tim’s thoughts.

When had his ears started ringing? Tim didn’t think it had been the first blow to the head, nor the second, but the sound had been going long enough he had almost forgotten about it. 

He tried to look up, but the movement pulled the rope around his neck tighter still, and made the whole room spin. There was a sound like shouting that spiked pain into the back of his neck.

Tim didn’t  _ want _ to die, but there really wasn’t much he could do to stop it at this point. He just wanted to breathe or, failing that, stop worrying about not being able to.

Through the patchy darkness and the tears he didn’t remember crying, Tim caught a flash of bright red before his knee finally collapsed and he dropped into the black.

\--

Waking up wasn’t something Tim expected to happen, though the pain that came with consciousness was almost comforting in its familiarity. 

There was no obnoxious beeping and whatever he was lying on was actually comfortable, so he couldn’t be in the Cave, which Tim was a little surprised by. That was normally where he woke up after these kinds of things. 

What had happened?

He vaguely remembered what must have been someone entering the warehouse, and then him passing out, but beyond that it was just hurt and his own guilty recriminations. Nothing so much as a crest to tell him who had somehow managed to come for him despite everything.

Of course, if he was safe and not in the Cave, there was really only one person it could have been.

“Tim?” That would be the man of the… hour? Night? Was it even still night? How long had Tim been out for? “Was that a waking-up groan, or an ‘I’m slowly dying because I’m an idiot who doesn’t call for back-up’ groan?”

He choked on a laugh, and cracked his eyes open to squint at Jason’s hovering form. His voice was dry and strained. “Haven’t decided yet. And my comm broke.”

Jason reached out, and twitched slightly, hand combing through his hair instead of making contact with Tim. “And you didn’t have a backup? I thought  _ I _ was supposed to be the reckless one.”

“Couldn’t reach the spare through all the broken bones,” Tim would have shrugged if he wasn’t fairly sure that the feeling of bone scraping against itself would result in him blacking out again. Instead he dropped his gaze to the very interesting blanket that was covering him. Infinitely better to focus on than all the ways he had fucked up tonight, and all of the things he couldn’t push through his too-tight throat.

Warm touch, a hand carefully touching his and shaking ever so slightly, startled him before he could start to really spiral, and Tim looked back up at Jason, who had dropped to his knees beside the bed Tim was resting on. “You might just be the unluckiest person I’ve ever met. I’m helping design your next cowl. My helmet has hands-free functions we’re getting you. This won’t happen again.”

Tim’s mouth had already been dry, perks of passing out, but now he was sure there were deserts with better hydration. He couldn’t speak even if he had any idea what to say.

“Despite the overwhelming evidence pointing to it being a bad idea, I trust you to handle yourself. Shit happens, and you can’t always be ready for it. I just,” and here Jason’s voice broke, though his eyes stayed locked to Tim’s and his grip tightened to the point of a sharp pain. “I’m just glad I got there in time. If I hadn’t been in the area to talk to an informant of mine…”

“Thank you,” Tim forced out, as the tightness in his chest peaked and coughs rattled through him. The violent shaking rippled pain through him, head to toe and back again and by the time it stopped he was curled around Jason’s hand.

Jason’s other hand gently scratched across the nape of his neck, and Tim shuddered at the caress. “You need to sleep. I’ll get some water and text Tam to let her know you aren’t going in to work tomorrow.”

Fear shot through Tim, fear of being alone, that Jason would leave and Tim would have missed the chance to be closer to him  _ again _ . He held onto Jason’s hand with a deathgrip, ignoring the ache in favour of  _ not letting go _ . “Stay. Please.”

If he had been a little more clear-headed, Tim might have been able to make sense of the expression on Jason’s face, but as it was, he was just glad Jason had stopped moving and wasn’t trying to leave anymore. 

There was some rustling as he settled back on to the floor, and then their fingers were laced together and it was like Tim could finally breathe again, even as darkness crept back in. 

“Okay,” Jason’s voice was soft and warm enough to melt chocolate. “Okay, I’ll stay.”

**Author's Note:**

> And here's Day 3. I went with Role Reversal and then just mostly wrote Tim being Angsty As Hell which isn't much of a reversal. But this is what I have and I'm sticking with it. There were other, cooler ideas I had for this one, but I just couldn't get them to work so here we are.
> 
> I'm not as happy with this one as I am the other ones, but it was at least kind of interesting to write. And it could have come out a lot worse, I suppose. 
> 
> A reminder that I'm not posting anything tomorrow because I'm using the Free Day as a break day, so I wish you all the best, and thanks for reading!


End file.
